http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | GLEN, N.H. --
It sure is quiet up here, so still that you can almost hear the snow fall.

In the coffeehouses and restaurants there's scant talk of politics. There's hardly a bumper sticker in sight, and only a handful of lawn signs. No breathless activists wearing buttons or stickers. No indefatigable canvassers walking the neighborhoods. In fact, it's easier to find a leaflet for Storyland, a well-loved amusement park that closed for the season Oct. 8, than for any of the contenders in the New Hampshire Primary, which occurs Jan. 10.

Drive around Carroll County, the only county in New England that Barry Goldwater carried in 1964, and you'll find almost no evidence that the first primary of the political season is but five weeks away. The television stations are starting to carry advertising, to be sure, but the urgency is for the shopping rush of the December holidays, not the political passions of the January primary. Republicans here and around the country are fervent in their desire to defeat Barack Obama, but they're not all that worked up for any of the GOP candidates.

Washington has its budget deficit. New Hampshire has a motivation deficit.

That's in part because none of the candidates inspires real enthusiasm. The rocky roadsides here are littered with candidacies that never were: Rudolph Giuliani, Haley Barbour, Sarah Palin, Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush. For months activists waited for one or more of them to set their cap for the nomination, infusing each with the qualities the real Republican field lacked, which is to say the ability to ignite the ardor and devotion Mr. Obama inspired in 2008, forgetting of course that Mr. Obama did not win the primary here.

Another explanation for the motivation deficit: the lack of a narrative to the 2012 presidential campaign -- so far.

Four years ago, there was the apparent death and then the dramatic revivification of John McCain, a story line that had resonance here, where Mr. McCain was remembered for his 19-point victory over George W. Bush in 2000. The Arizona senator and Vietnam war hero went on to win the nomination.

Now, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, pronounced dead by all the smart people only six months ago, is surging and even has a Manchester Union Leader endorsement in his pocket. This looks for all the world like a second revivification, though history doesn't always repeat itself with such poetry and symmetry. A candidacy needs a better rationale than the notion that it is treading a well-worn path, particularly in a state that claims a poet who argues that roads not taken make all the difference.

That same erstwhile poet-chicken farmer, in a verse titled "New Hampshire," once called these environs "a most restful state," which it is right now, though "the paper," as the Union Leader is often called, has stirred things up a bit, the way it did in the old days, when William Loeb was publisher. His successor once removed, Joseph W. McQuaid, said the paper's search "for conservatives of courage and conviction who are independent-minded, grounded in their core beliefs about this nation and its people, and best equipped for the job," led it to Mr. Gingrich.

No subject save the weather and maybe the Red Sox has been debated here more fervently than the influence of the paper, which counts among its endorsed candidates Robert A. Taft (1952), John Ashbrook (1972), Pete du Pont (1988) and Steve Forbes (2000). Only twice, in 1968 (Richard M. Nixon) and 1980 (Ronald Reagan), did the paper's choice prevail. And already the supporters of Mitt Romney -- whose father, Gov. George Romney of Michigan, was derided as "Chiuhuahua George" on the front page of the paper nearly a half-century ago -- are offering the theory that independents and moderates will find the Union Leader's imprimatur on the Gingrich candidacy an odious mark.

It is true that the new threat to Mr. Romney posed by Mr. Gingrich makes this a more interesting and, perhaps, more vital contest than it might otherwise have been if a former governor of a neighboring state was holding a steady if not impressive lead with no apparent challenger. Now Mr. Romney's forces will have to work hard to win and, if they do, they will have earned a victory more significant than simply a perfunctory buss to the cheeks from their cousins down the road. And of course, the good neighbor policy doesn't always work here, as the supporters of Edmund S. Muskie of Maine learned in 1972.

On the surface, there should be enormous interest in this race. It's the first time in 16 years that the Republican race stands alone for the attention of New Hampshire voters, who include independents, a potentially important force.

Though this state (and county) voted for Mr. Obama in 2008, the emphasis in this primary will be on conservative positions and values. A generation ago it was not uncommon even for Democrats here to distribute yard signs that pronounced their candidate as "honest, experienced, conservative," the implication being that the three words were synonymous with virtue.

That emphasis on conservatism is back, even for Mr. Romney, who until midway through his single term as governor was resolutely moderate, if not a tad liberal.

Today Mr. Romney says he wouldn't have undertaken one of his father's signature battles in Lansing, the fight for a state income tax. In those days, the elder Romney was considered a formidable challenger to Goldwater, whom he eventually refused to endorse in 1964. In recently released taped musings, Jacqueline Kennedy says of her husband: "He was nervous about Romney."

Now it's conservatives who are nervous about a different Mr. Romney, which is why Mr. Gingrich, who is also muscling up in right-leaning South Carolina, the next theater of battle, last week went out of his way to say he was "a lot more conservative than Mitt Romney."

For all but the supporters of Ron Paul, who is a lot more conservative than either of them, the motivation gap is a palpable presence in this race. Voters have ample reason to ignore the polls at this stage of the season, but this single finding, in the latest Pew poll, bears watching as the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary draw near: The only major candidate whose favorable ratings outweigh his unfavorable ratings isn't on the Republican ballot here. He is Barack Obama.

David Shribman, a Pulitzer Prize winner in journalism, is executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Previously:

11/28/11 For GOPers, the winds are beginning to pick up, the horizon is darkening
11/21/11 Today's polarized politics . . . blame FDR and the political scientists
11/11/11The sporting life
11/07/11 Ron Paul, true believer
10/31/11 Why Cain isn't able
10/10/11 GOP starting over
10/03/11 The Forgotten War of 1812
09/26/11 The way we live now
09/19/11 The crisis this time
09/11/11 But what will it mean?
09/05/11 A horse race column: Who might win the GOP nomination and how it might unfold
08/29/11 The vacuum calls
08/22/11 Passion and politics: How Barack Obama and Mitt Romney got crowded into the same dangerous corner
08/15/11 Eleanor's little village
08/08/11 The agony of August
08/01/11 The politics of the impossible: What a country this might be if the political class served the broad interests of the majority
07/25/11 Pennant fever grips 'Burgh
07/18/11 Exemplar of an era
07/11/11 On summer
07/04/11 The soul of the party
06/27/11 What the Secretary said
06/20/11 Romney has big advantages over his rivals, but they will be coming after him
06/06/11 One question each
05/30/11 The 14-week challenge
05/23/11 Delay tactics
05/16/11 Republicans are waiting
05/09/11 Bin Laden is dead. What does it mean?
05/02/11 From nobodies to nominees
04/25/11 The founders left slavery for future generations to settle, and we still haven't fully come to terms with it
04/18/11 From audacious to cautious
04/11/11 Dreaming of space
12/12/10 The GOP takes control
12/06/10 DECEMBER 7
11/29/10 GOP presidential hopefuls already are lining up local supporters in what is now a red state
11/22/10 Burning down the House
11/15/10 Institutions of higher learning are finally beginning to teach important lifeskills
11/04/10 The war has just begun
11/01/10 Echoes of a speech 40 years ago this week still resonate today
10/25/10 50 years ago America chose between two men who were dramatically different --- and eerily similar